Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Monday April 18, 2011 @12:18PM
from the would-they-give-one-to-you dept.

jddorian writes "I am head of a clinical division at an academic hospital (not Radiology, but similarly tech oriented). My fellow faculty (a dozen or so) want to switch from a paper calendar to electronic (night and weekend on-call schedule). Most have an iPhone or similar, so I envisaged a CalDAV server. The Hospital IT department doesn't offer any iPhone compatible calendar tool, so I bought (with my cash) a tiny server, installed BSD and OpenLDAP for accounts, and installed and configured DAViCal. After I tested it out, I emailed IT to ask to allow port 8443 through the hospital firewall to this server. The tech (after asking what port 8443 was for), said he would unblock the port after I provide him with a login account on the machine (though 'I don't need root access'). I was taken aback, and after considering it, I am still leaning toward opposing this request, possibly taking this up the chain. I'm happy to allow any scan, to ensure it has no security issues, but I'd rather not let anyone else have a login account. What do the readers of Slashdot think? Should I give IT a login account on a server that is not owned or managed by them?"

That machine on the network without IT approval is a violation of HIPAA Security Rule. Frankly, the fact that your ISO hasn't written you up means he is too nice of a guy. Yeah, you need to give IT access, and then thank them for not written you up and turning your name over to the BoD.

I've had to deal with more than a few doctors who'd tried to have everything their way. They are some amazing smart guys but don't consider all the problems these one-offs create. I appreciate them trying to move things forward - I do the same myself - but their "I walk on water so you should do what I say" attitude does more harm than good and wastes scarce resources either fighting them or changing things to suit.

You're precisely right. There is a REASON that there are policies - in this case, federal law that can turn into massive, multi-million-dollar lawsuits.

I always am amused when someone kludges something together behind IT's back because "it's easier" than actually following protocol to get a function. If you need a function, we'll work with you to get it done, provided we can legally do so. If we can't do it, we will tell you why.

Going around behind IT's back is asking for trouble. Worse than that, it ensures that IT looks at you askance from that point forward. There are users we work with and have no problem with, and then there are the assholes who do something behind our backs and cause trouble when we have to chase down their mistakes. Guess who gets first priority on the list of new feature/function requests?

Hilarious. This story has polarized Slashdot into the "I actually work in IT in a systems administration capacity" camp and the "I tinker with computers as a hobby" camp. The tinkerers are actually taking offense that the "so called experts" won't immediately recognize their superior genius. The experts, for their part, seem used to this crap. Here's the deal, tinkerers: we will respect your mad skillz only after you have demonstrated them several times and jumped through all the proper hoops. Until then, you are just like any other Little User. No insult intended, but this is our job, and our butts on the line, not yours.

Hilarious. This story has polarized Slashdot into the "I work in IT as a sysadmin and managing tech is my job" camp and the "I don't work in IT and need tech to do my job" camp. The sysadmins are actually taking offense that the non-IT folks won't immediately recognize their superior policies and procedures. The non-IT folks, for their part, seem used to this crap. Here's the deal, IT: we will respect your mad skillz only after you have demonstrated that that your hoops are justifiable and not unduly burdensome. Until then, you are just like the PHBs. No insult intended, but this is our job, and our butts on the line, not yours.

There, fixed that for you. At the risk of being modded "-1 Disagree" to oblivion.

Oh my fucking GOD, read up on HIPAA, this is not some heavy handed IT decision, this is a fucking Federal Regulation with HUGE penalties for non-compliance, but then, why should I expect you to understand that? You aren't in IT, and it is not your job to understand those things.

Given that we have already been vetted by your company's HR, and by other IT staff at your place of employment, the default assumption should be that we know our craft. Would you take offense if I simply assumed that you are unqualified to do the job you were hired to do?

Actually, I will assume you are unqualified at your job, as you see fit to complain about your tools (computers) and we all know, it is a poor workman who blames his tools. I'm guessing YOU are the reason you have difficulty with your job, not your IT department.

I work in IT. While I agree with your opinion, and/I/ will work with someone if they're up front, often times I am told by my superiors NOT to work with people... and then what happens is that people pull this kind of stuff instead. It is not a given that working together with IT will get you anywhere.

I used to work at a shop that had at first, pretty loose and easy IT regulations then got an IT manager that cracked down hard.

My ass was on the line when I couldn't be flexible enough to kiss some middle manager's ass and get some feature implemented NOW NOW NOW, because we were that flexible 8 months ago, despite me telling them that 4 months ago, IT cracked down and we have real change management procedures.

I understand why IT ops tend to have buttholes tighter than a snare drum, becau

Nothing in the article indicates IT not doing their job. Nowhere does Mr. PHB Division Head say he asked IT first. No, he has used Ubuntu once and therefore he is an expert on computers and networking and does not need the help of the obviously untrained buffoons in IT, I mean, do THEY have a PhD.? No! He says they don't offer any iPhone compatible tool, which probably means they DO offer a tool, just not one that integrates into his iPhone the way he'd like, and he is willing to go around IT's back and in

Not entirely accurate, the sysadmins are on the side of following HIPAA regulations and not being personally liable for million dollar lawsuits, fines, and criminal charges, while the lusers are on the side of venting their frustrations with people who they feel should be like a McDonalds clerk, subserviently taking and delivering their orders.

Who says we have a bad reputation? I'd say PHB tenured Division Heads of teaching hospitals have a worse reputation on Slashdot. Don't get me wrong, I've seen good IT and bad, but your experience probably says more about you than it does about IT as a profession.

And, just a friendly reminder, this is a technology site catering to IT professionals, you most likely won't get a lot of sympathy for your anti-IT bitch-fest here.

No, getting a job as an administrator doesn't make one competent, keeping a job as an administrator makes you competent. Having been there for several years means you know something about the environment. Being responsible for a slice of IT operations and dealing with all the different applications and services utilizing your slice of responsibility day after day makes you competent.

It doesn't I understand that the enterprise hard drive might have a better mtbf than a consumer drive, but I can tell you that

Give them a user account with no privileges. They can look at the command prompt all day if it makes them happy.

Besides, it shouldn't kill them to white list your server on one freaking port.

I certainly hope IT would hire someone smart enough to realize that you gave them no access. In fact, I'd hope they were smart enough to place that machine on it's own VLAN or outside the firewall so that you (the employee) couldn't grab whatever data was available on the internal network and broadcast it on whatever port you were given.

Yeah, what the worlds needs is some disgruntled employee putting a computer in their office that will dump client data out a particular port without IT knowing what is going on.

...snip...

Besides, it shouldn't kill them to white list your server on one freaking port.

No... It can kill them. You're running an application that isn't approved, and they haven't weighed the vulnerabilities. An open port is always a target for exploitation, which is why the IT department needs to be able to audit the machine and ensure what software is installed, so they can mitigate those vulnerabilities.

I'm going to guess that if this person set up a server just say, in their office, this machine is on a network segment that may not be as firewalled-off as a data center may be. That means if something malicious does happen to this server, there's a greater chance of infection elsewhere, as well as some risk of productivity loss. Besides, the machine itself doesn't have to be the target of attack-- it can just be the jumping-off point for something bigger, once they've installed tools to probe the network.

Especially when you're in a healthcare setting, privacy is a big issue. You could conceivably have someone post patient data in a calendar appointment, even. If that connection isn't TLS encrypted, and the devices not properly managed, it just takes one theft of a device sitting in a coffee shop to result in a serious breach of privacy and patient trust, even if the thief doesn't access the data that might be contained on the device.

That explains a lot. Guess what, Head of the Division: just because you are smart, and well trained in YOUR field, does not make you a computer or network expert. As the head of a division at an academic hospital, you have a responsibility to not only follow HIPPA (or your country's equivalent) requirements yourself, but to set an example for the medical professionals training at your facility.

Do you simply not understand that plugging unauthorized and unaudited equipment into a hospital's network is not only a very bad idea, but against the law in most places? As the head of a division, you should understand that.

The fact that you were "taken aback" by a request to follow policy indicates that you most likely view this as a dick waving contest. It is not. Your dick will not shrink if you allow the computer professionals to audit your work and comply with hospital policy and the law. No one expects you to be a network expert, that is your hobby, not your profession.

In short, stop being a condescending ass and let the professionals do their job. If I knew an untrained "division head' was setting up unauthorized networking equipment, I would avoid that hospital like the plague, as I don't want hacked equipment broadcasting my medical history to the world, understand?

The fact that you were "taken aback" by a request to follow policy indicates that you most likely view this as a dick waving contest. It is not. Your dick will not shrink if you allow the computer professionals to audit your work and comply with hospital policy and the law.

In short, stop being a condescending ass and let the professionals do their job. If I knew an untrained "division head' was setting up unauthorized networking equipment, I would avoid that hospital like the plague, as I don't want hacked equipment broadcasting my medical history to the world, understand?

We had a thread similar a while back - I explained that there are reasons IT does things. It has nothing to do with wanting to "spite" the users. It has plenty to do with ignorant users thinking that the cra

You seem to have read the request for input as condescending, pompous, and arrogant.

I did not see it as that.

I read it as, "Hey guys, I know what I'm doing (computer-wise), but I'm not sure if IT should have constant access to it. What do you think?"

Yet instead of giving the guy a normal answer ("This may not be HIPPA compliant... as much as you may hate it, you have to follow IT's rules on their network...") , you felt the need to attack him. Why? Because he's not a system administrator by employ?

Mr. jddorian ignores (in the sense that he doesn't know about it) HIPAA and IT had not mentioned it at any time. Since IT didn't help and didn't explain why, he goes on to solve his problem. When he finally does it, he requests something that on his perspective seems trivial: access to his solution.

Mr. jddorian is a division head at a teaching hospital. If Mr. jddorian does not know about HIPAA then Mr. jddorian needs to be let go from his position immediately.

True, but being dickwads makes you dickwads. Try tact, understanding, facilitation, and education instead of insulting, berating, and denigrating people simply because they don't have as high an understanding of your specialty.

Depending on the poster's country, there may be a lot of regulatory, compliance, legal, and other issues at play here. This appears to be a rogue server as you cite. If I were the head of IT, I'd have it outta-there in a heartbeat and write up whomever deployed it-- on the surface and without other information, this is a problem.

WIthout more information, it sounds to me like a convenience issue for the department head, but it's a legal nightmare looking for a spot marked X-- that server, for starters.

A good IT manager would mosey over and have a sit-down to explain the IT policy concerning servers, lay out all the reasons why IT is responsible for them - backups, security scans, keeping antivirus up to date, tracking hardware assets, etc.

By the end of the conversation, the owner of said rogue device would be thinking 'Wow, I really should hand this over, this guy is much more capable than I am at maintaining a server.. and why would I _want_ to maintain a server anyway?'

No need for threats or derision for being ignorant. (note: ignorance isn't a bad trait as long as it isn't willful and repeat, it just means you don't know)

While I agree there is no need for threats, the OP mentioned that he was inclined to "take it up the chain" because the IT person wanted an account.

Not aimed at the IT person directly, but the OP certainly seems willing to make threats on his own.

The OP is an ass and should have a severe talking to by management. If I was the IT person, I would see the OPs threat to take it up the chain and raise him a discussion of plugging unauthorized equipment into the network, busting HIPAA regulations, and potentially exposing the organization to security breach, bad publicity, legal liability, and fines -- and have that discussion in front of management when the OP took his case "up the chain".

A good IT manager would get their users what they need so that they don't have to attempt to do it themselves.

It shouldn't be hard to get some shared calendar services running on an extra box somewhere...so I think we have already determined that this hospital does not have a "good IT manager"

No, we have determined nothing of the sort. For example, "The Division Head is an obstreperous ass" is an equally likely explanation. Note that he did not say that IT refused his request, just that they did not currently offer such a service. Likely scenario, PHB thinks he knows more than IT, sets up own server without asking them, then takes umbrage at a request for a login because he is the Division Head and a Certified Genius at All Things.

Exactly. Setting up a calendaring server for a single department is a lot different from getting the entire facility to sign off on funding for it. The down side of IT in a large organization is that you cannot do things piecemeal. What the division head should be doing is selling the idea to his peers at the same level in other departments. If his department needs it, maybe he should find room in his budget to make it a reality for the entire hospital. IT is always short on funding, so he could build some bridges to IT, and other departments, and get EVERYONE a good calendaring solution.

It does not sound like the guy is a department head. He sounds like a pompous ass hat who wants to do things his way. He reminds me of a VP I knew once who decided he didn't like the way the database system worked, so he did everything for his department in Access. Despite being warned repeatedly about what a piece of crap Access is, he plowed on. 18 months later, Access took a crap on him and he lost everything. The shitty thing about it is that the data loss fell on IT. Senior management decided that IT should have been more forceful in nipping the Access adventure in the bud, even though they failed to back up IT when IT first raised the issue.

I'm sure there are similar dynamics at work in the hospital. Who is going to fix the server when the application takes a big dump and nobody can get their schedules? I bet you it sure as hell won't be Mr. Department Head guy. He'll be too busy doing his real job, and that's how it should be. Let IT handle the computers and software.

You see this type of thing a lot in healthcare actually (not usually so egregious). IT has a requirement to follow policy and legal regulations, (HIPAA, SOX, HITECH, etc). Due to this, some of the shinies that individuals may want are not allowed. Instead of recognizing the reasons, people do what the submitter did and try to do an end run around the whole process ignoring the fact that what IT is doing by not allowing these things is protecting the company in a legally mandated way.

Highly irregular that the first thing IT heard about it would be an 'open this port on a firewall request'; which is basically taboo for anything storing security sensitive info anyways -- proper security design is a major factor, including requirements such as server administrators at arms length from devs of the application and from auditors/security team.

Actually, that's usually how this crap happens."I want project X set up yesterday so me and my fellow tenured people can do it immediately." - IT response, "Give us some time to look into it and ensure we can come up with a solution that meets regulations.

A week later: "IT is too slow. I want it yesterday. I'll just go kludge something together (or have my incompetent Indian grad student do it) and plug it into the network."

Happens all the time, especially when you have douchenozzles with tenure running around. IT can only "see" the device once it's plugged into the network jack, and even then if they're monitoring a ton of machines, they won't know it from an iPhone or Blackberry or iPad until it either (a) pops up as unscannable, (b) they get the "open a port for my kludge project" request, or (c) it attempts to send some data packet that triggers an alarm.

Did the OP ask the IT department what sort of services they are capable of providing? Hospital IT departments are usually in the habit of trying to provide departments with what they need, as department heads and doctors generally win the battle for "I want ________" when it goes up the chain.

Did he inform IT of his plans prior to executing it, or just bring in a server and set it up, then start asking for access? If he did the former, they might have worked with him, providing him with rackspace, security, and expert administration so that his workload was limited to application administration. if he did the latter, he's lucky they haven't made an issue out of it and gotten him written up.

Did he make sure he's not violating any federal regulations regarding patient data security? A rogue server on the network is a MAJOR security threat, no matter how competent the administrator is (or believes himself to be).

Did he think about the precedent this sets? If every department decides to go running their own servers on their own terms, IT can't support them and the whole hospital steps back about 20 years in how their network functions.

Did he consider the idea that maybe the service he's setting up for his own department might be useful to scale to the entire hospital at a later date? it sounds like he's found a service he considers worth putting a lot of effort into providing...for just his department. If it's good for radiology, it's likely good for lots of others. But HIS server probably can't accommodate that scale. HIS server isn't centralized. HIS server...well, is his.

Give IT their login and pray it doesn't go farther.......in my HOSPITAL environment you'd pretty much be hauled in front of the CIO, HR, and your dept chair to have a career education session....
1. Most Likely, your hospital has an email system
2. Most Likely your hospital has a web portal to said email system
3. Most Likely, your email system has a calendar available on the portal
4. Most Likely, you over engineered this....
Tacobell programing...aka don't reinvent the wheel to do everything

Same here... I work for a bank. Anybody caught setting up a server that was not explicitly sanctioned by IT would be fired on the spot. Period, no questions asked and no quarter. For compliance, all communication in and out must be logged. This is FEDERALLY mandated, and not just IT being nazi's. I worked for a company prevously that provided call center and info management services for a medical provider and we didnt even allow people on the floor with cell phones.
Is it abnormal that, as a IT professional, that this post almosts makes me angry?? lol

More than that, who says you are a qualified systems admin? You say "I am head of a clinical division at an academic hospital (not Radiology, but similarly tech oriented)." And I take it that you installed BSD and OpenLDAP. My question is... so what? Who is to say what you really know? You are operating in a hospital. You have medical records. The IT staff there MUST make sure ALL systems there comply with HIPPA and industry security standards.

Hey, the IT guy watches Grey's Anatomy. Can he perform medical tests in your hospital? No? So what makes you think you are comparable to IT? They respect your job, how about you respect their's.

I'm sorry, but there is no way in hell I would let you on such a network without root. Not an account, but root. And if I were a patient, I would be screaming bloody hell if I found out non-IT staff got to run their own servers on the hospital network. The fact that they let you run at all is mind boggling to me. Probably because they can't fire a department head or you have tenure or something similar.

But you are on the most sensitive type of network and balking at the most basic request. "Should I give IT a login account on a server that is not owned or managed by them?""

Should they allow you host a server on a network that is not owned or managed by you? Honestly, if you did this all without first passing it by my IT department, I'd do my best to have you fired. Don't wanna give access to your precious box... geez, you really think THAT is the big deal in all this. Unbelievable, foolish, and arrogant to say the least!

You don't have to take it aggressively...The question is genuine...What part offended you?

The part where I am an IT administrator who knows better than to play doctor, and the part where the poster is an (I assume) doctor who doesn't know better than to play IT. I know what I'm doing after years of training and experience. Yeah, I could read the manual and run an XRay machine, but how incredibly stupid and irresponsible would it be for me to do that.

I don't care if it's a doctor, lawyer, or plumber... but if they think just cause they play with OSS at home that they are a l337 hax0r who will post to/. for sympathy against "The Man" is SORELY mistaken.

We do things for a reason, especially when it comes to security. When you are dealing with military or hospital systems, someone could die if IT screws up. And we sure as hell don't need cock sure users pulling the IT equivilant of "Don't worry, I play a Dr. on TV," on our networks.

Am I aggressive? Yes, because this potentially puts patients at risk. I'm just as aggressive if I were to post on a doctor forum, "Hey, I brought in my home sewing kit to do stitches. I watch House and I'm pretty good when I practice on dolls at home. Why does the floor director refuse to let me help out?"

It is not a matter of patient information getting out through the calendar itself. You'll have to rely to a certain extent on the users not to leak sensitive information, same as you rely on them not to write sensitive patient information on sticky notes and accidentally drop them in the parking lot.

Suppose you are 100% certain that the information stored in your calendar is not sensitive (e.g. "May 7-8: on-call Dr X"). So if you had to give some random guy physical access to that server, where would you wa

But instead of asking "should I give IT a login account on a server that is not owned or managed by them?" perhaps you should ask "should I give IT a login account on a server that is on their network?"

Essentially what it boils down to is that hospital IT departments have almost no chance of establishing good environments, because every doctor that has 5 seconds of free time feels like they have both the authority and obligation to directly interfere with how IT does things.

Situations can vary from either the I've-been-working-for-50-years-without-a-computer-and-I'm-not-gonna-learn-how-to-use-one-now to what we have here where someone know how to make things better by themselves and simply bypasses the whole system with an application that is not supported or endorsed by the IT. And for sure does not integrate with other data-flow activities that are going on in the hospital.

In the end IT guys run for cover anytime when some local "god" decides that their way is best and things will run how they seem fit, because they just bought a new iPhone and want to have EVERYTHING interact with it. Screw the company-issued smartphones!

I'm aware that there might be bureaucratic red tape involved in getting things done. But if you go outside of system in the end you just make sure that nothing works for anyone instead of having a list of services that are stable and continue growing at a steady pace, based on a good input from everyone.

In any case, at the end of the day, why does a service like that even need to be hosted from within a hospital? Plug the server in at home and you avoid any problems if the calendar in iPhone is such a big deal for you./Disclaimer: iPhone is just an example here. Enter your preferred/hated brand instead

Actually, you're giving IT access to a server for a service that they were not required to provide, and probably would have to a lot of asking for.

Seriously, people...a hospital stores confidential, privileged data about patients and medical conditions that is supposed to have certain safeguards applied to it in order to protect that confidentiality.

As has been repeated here already (and will be plenty more), placing an piece of personal network equipment on a medical network is bad enough. Asking for no oversight, giving your good word that everything will be OK, and requesting a port in the firewall be opened up to the public internet is lunacy.

Even if you're well-intentioned, capable, and reasonable about what you're asking for, this isn't a home server and family pictures you're providing access to.

The most disturbing thing to me about this story and question is that someone in the IT department was willing to open the port and allow the machine to stay connected without having root access, intimate knowledge of all installed versions of software and packages, and without relocating the server to an access-controlled datacenter. If I'm the head of IT, first I unplug and remove the box, then I talk to legal to see what needs to be done (audits, interviews, scans, etc), and then I reprimand the person in IT who said it could be done.

Exactly which part of a "night and weekend on-call schedule" do you think will contain private health information?

What part of "opening up a firewall port so this department can run a server they aren't willing to let IT have access to but is still on the network" doesn't strike you as completely bypassing security protocols?

Are we to assume this guys is 100% competent and hasn't inadvertently done something monumentally stupid? If this machine is compromised from outside, and used to access private health

Exactly which part of a "night and weekend on-call schedule" do you think will contain private health information?

Aside from the other responses about lowering the overall level of security (which are correct), how about the part where the schedule involves treating patients? If ever so much as a patient's name appears in a doctor's schedule, that's privileged information.

It's probably also AGAINST THE LAW. Christ. Submitter is an unmitigated moron. People are going to jail for HIPPA violations and you want to dump any old crap on the hospital network for a CALENDAR? Just use an external web based thing ya moron. Try Google Apps.

I'd have gone right to the pres and required you be fired immediately OP. Arrogant doctors are not to be let loose on the network without training wheels.

He may not be a moron, but he's socially incompetent. He wants what he wants and he's going to do whatever he wants to do to make it happen, IT be damned. Maybe he should spend less time learning to install Linux and more time learning to work cooperatively with those who he needs help from. Whose fault is it going to be when some automated script finds a hole in his "free as in beer" calendaring solution, roots his box, and then uses it as a launching point to own the rest of the network?

Indeed. Be happy they haven't fired you for violating acceptable use and/or purchasing policies. Don't expect to take this server with you when you leave, either.

IT not supporting the application is one thing, YOU buying unknown, unsupportable hardware, plugging it into their network and then being arrogant enough to decide they shouldn't even have a log in? You seem to be running a bit short on common sense here.

Also, this is not a random user requesting access, it is your information technology people who A) should know what they are doing and B) are on the hook for what happens on the network security-wise.

Indeed. Be happy they haven't fired you for violating acceptable use and/or purchasing policies. Don't expect to take this server with you when you leave, either.

The guy asking this question is an academic, and as head of his group is probably tenured - he's not in danger of being sacked. And at the risk of painting with too broad a brush... in my experience, a lot of faculty are used to doing whatever they want, and tend to let others worry about the less important stuff (like HIPAA compliance, if there's actually money in the budget to make a purchase, or generally cleaning up messes caused by aforementioned faculty not thinking things through).

At a minimum I would request that the box be placed on a separate VLAN that has no other access to the LAN. Internal access should go through the firewall rules like you would for an external server with all the appropriate logs and auditing. I would also transfer ownership by giving them the hardware.

You're asking them to open ports and you're "taken aback" for them asking for an account? They ARE the IT department.... did you even bother asking them if they had the capability of doing what you wanted before you reinvented the wheel?

You may not think that IT owns or manages your server, but they do own or manage the network. Imagine if some guy from IT came down to you and wanted to start looking through radiology records. I'm sure you'd ask him if it was ok to look over his shoulder every now and again before you gave him full access.

Tell them that the second they reimburse you for the server they can not only get a login, but they can become responsible for its maintenance and security and they had better be sure it has a solid uptime. That only seems reasonable.:-)

Sounds great. He can have access to the network switch port and the firewall opened up as soon as that transaction is complete. The Hospital IT should have switched off the network port the second they heard of this machine. Well really the network ports should just not all be on to begin with.

It's their job to manage security and the infrastructure. At a minimum, you gain a second set of eyes and hopefully expertise in hardening the server against the outside world. The last thing they want is your box to be a big gaping hole in their system.If IT doesn't need root access, then he probably just wants it there to review the OS/changes to make sure that it won't break anything. Also, if it goes down, IT can help you get it back up or raise it when you're not available.

If you're hit by a car tomorrow and die you want someone else to be able to pick up the work and go forward. Once upon a time I had a VP I worked for at an ISP put me and the other head of the IT department on a plane with him to LA. The three of us were the only ones with access to the entire companies systems. I mentioned to him, if the plane went down, the company would probably be dead within a week. He just laughed it off.

That said, your IT department are the best ones to handle this. I doubt the hospital is paying you to play tech nerd, I'm sure you have other work you should be doing. The IT guys are PAID to do this and are screened carefully (at least I hope so) by management to be trustworthy in doing it.

It sounds to me more like you're looking for job security by being the only one with keys to the castle.

Let me tell you how this goes down in most corporations. If you don't, their security dept. simply won't give you what you want. They're likely to shut you out anyway. If you take it up the chain then you're calling attention to the fact that you have a non-hospital entity on the company network. This is/was a bad career move. You might get away with it and many do for some time. Given that you're running BSD is a plus as you're not as likely to propagate a virus. Unfortunately for you, IT already knows. So if you choose not to give them a login you might find yourself without an IP address. Or worse, without a job.

You are operating a server, behind the firewall, on their infrastructure, in their facility. You, (un)fortunately, don't make the rules. What you're doing sounds great and the lengths you've gone to make it happen are commendable. But I can't imagine any decent business being run while allowing any employee to run any server they want behind their firewalls without at least some oversight. You're going to have to follow their rules, sorry.

Yes. The simplest is to give the tech an account with limited privileges, let him log on and look around, and then when you have this server up and running, reduce the privileges on his account further so that he can't interfere with anything.

But here's bigger factors you should worry about : think longer term. There's a chance that your hacked together server will be in use for the next 10-20+ years. Just how things go. Make sure to make an image file of the final configuration of the server onto a DVD

Feel free to take this up the chain of command. Both you and IT probably have valid arguments, and you should have a chance to duke it out to higher-ups. But at the end of the day, both sides will need to abide by whatever decision. To do otherwise would risk firing. If you don't like the decision that comes down ("Yes, IT must be given login access if you have this server"), you can simply tell your clients (the docs and allied health staff you serve) that you can't provide the calendar feature they as

What you've done would cause any professional IT group to get out the hot tar, feathers, and rail. Or at least come into your office and ask you politely to remove the damn server from their facility. And never do this again. You must have missed all the security briefings, the issues with HIPPA, and whatnot when you were looking at systems. What you've done is to create a 'rogue system'.

Imagine one of your kids sets up a server in your house. You don't understand it, you don't know if it's happily sniffing network traffic to steal passwords so pizza can be ordered using your credit cards, serving up pr0n, or just running minecraft. Would you willy nilly allow the kids to open a port on your firewall without the ability to audit what they're doing ?

Of course not.

Personally I'm amazed that they only asked for an account on your little server. I would have gone over and watched while you removed it from the facility and put in in your car.

You both seemed to miss the "head of department" bit. I've worked in an environment like that, and can assure you putting an unauthorized device on the network won't get you marched out the door unless it happens to be attached to the mouldering body of Jimmy Hoffa. Even then, it's iffy. Most likely, IT would be directed to deodorize Jimmy and "make it work somehow". There would be a nonzero chance that the uppity little tech who thought he was going to tell a department head what to do would be looking

Does it sit on an IT managed network? Connected to IT managed switches? Does it use IT managed/owned internet access? Did you get approval from IT to connect a server to their managed network and deploy an unapproved service from them before plugging it into the IT managed network?

Im willing to bet the answer to all of the above is "no". You should be prepared for the WWE type smackdown. You should also re-read the Acceptable use policy for your enterprise/organization and you should very politely offer them watever access they desire to allow your unauthorized service on their managed network.

1.) You're storing organizational data on a non-organizationally owned IT device. For that reason alone, they should say "no". (What guarantee do they have that you won't take your machine with you when you quit/get fired, and the data with it?)2.) Your machine is on their network. They are responsible for what happens on that machine. Your machine could potentially be used to escalate placement of an attacker to the rest of their network.3.) Even if you leave your machine after yo

It's pretty dicey to say it's not owned by them. While technically it might belong to you, and you might be able to prove it after an expensive lawsuit, in general it's not a good idea to mix your own stuff with company's stuff. If you bought it for use by the company, being possessive of it will not help you much.

Do you trust your IT group? Did you ask them why they want a login on your box? Do you have any reason not to trust them? Because they do have a reason to not trust you, and that is, lots of emp

..."Should I give IT a login account on a server that is not owned or managed by them?"...

You mean not owned and managed by them right now. However, someday down the road, when you are gone, IT will have to manage the damn thing. The company I work for made a mistake many years ago by allowing every user to have Microsoft Access installed on their machines. A lot of power users went wild creating Access databases for their own purposes. Naturally, over time, two things happened: 1) The databases grew in size and complexity. 2) The company began to depend on them and link the information in them to each other. Very quickly, all these databases became IT's responsibility to manage, especially when the pinheads who designed them got promoted to their particular level of incompetence, or left the company. It has been very tedious getting the data away from these god-awful Access databases, and re-designed and normalized into proper SQL Server or DB2 databases.

Yes, IT should have access to your server. They'll have to manage it eventually anyway.

The request to have a non-root account on a box plugged into a network managed by IT could not be more reasonable. If you have problems with this request then you have bigger issues my friend than we could possibly deal with here on Slashdot. It might be interesting to know exactly why you are opposed to this request. If you can't live with it then take you box and go home with it.

At the large company I worked for, hooking up personal computers to the network was a terminable offense. So no, you don't give them a login - you don't set this up at all.

The chief reason appeared to be fear of viruses and hackers, but there are many, many more. The hacker front can be a bit obscure: What if your CEO read the article about RSA getting hacked by an excel file with an embedded flash object, and the CIO assures the board that all computers will have flash removed and tasks IT with identifying and removing flash everywhere? How are they going to look having to explain 'well, we got everything, except for the personal computers that we don't have access to'?

Lets say people start relying on the service you are providing with a personal computer under your desk. What if it goes down? Helpdesk will get called, and need to know what to tell the caller so they don't appear incompetent, and need to be able to address the problem. What if IT is required to certify that all of their computers have X patch applied as part of a compliance audit for certification? What if a corporate policy goes out that no computer can run unecnrypted ftp regardless of port # they run it on? What if your company is obligated to ensure that terminated employees can't log in to servers? What if a lawsuit is served and your company is required to provide copies of all records pertaining to meetings with client xyz, and your calendar server has meeting info on it but your IT department doesn't even know it exists? None of these things are unreasonable, but none of them can be done easily if you're allowed to set up whatever box you want doing whatever.

Sure, it makes your job harder if you have to go through official channels to get the things you need to get your job done. But your company needs to be able to get their job done too, and a bunch of random whatever-somebody-set-up-under-their-desk systems makes that really hard.

1. install vmware server, configure a barebones virtual machine2. configure local ssh to listen to an alternate port number.3. configure port forwarding on your local machine to direct port 22 to the virtual machine.4. give them access to the VM

Best of both worlds.They think you've given them access, and you have...just not to the machine they think they're accessing.

If you decide to give them an account on the actual machine, configure an external location to backup your logfiles, even remote logging. When they attempt to do something bad on your machine (and they will) you'll have the proof you need to make someone regret their actions.

Is it really that hard to load into your smartphone a few weeks schedule occasionally? Even if everyone in the department is a techie, there is no need to try and get fancy. Sometimes the old fashioned really is better.
If you were talking a department of 100+, I can see some benefit. For a dozen freaking people though, you're just creating needless drama.

Why even bother setting up a server with all the excellent online calendar applications? For instance, many schools use Google apps for education or MS Live.

That aside, going rogue, not talking to IT, and making a custom solution just for your one area, is one of the things that makes working in IT so frustrating at times. Among the many, many problems that implementing your own solution can create, just think about one: what happens if you change jobs? I can personally attest to getting calls from random new department heads saying "Joe Smith (former department head) set up system xyz to do abc for us and now he's gone, I expect IT to now support system xyz".

This scenario is especially prevalent in academia. Academic freedom is important, but all too often it spills over into areas that it really doesn't belong.

The user ID "jddorian" is a fictional character on the US TV program Scrubs.

No head of department at any hospital or university I have been associated with would have had the time in their career to be more than passingly conversant on computer IT issues, forget know about ports. Heads of departments get to those positions only because they do nothing else with their lives.

A head of department would know better than to set up something themselves. They wouldn't also have the time to do something like that. They would be familiar with the idea that the hospital IT infrastructure is far more highly managed than normal corporate IT structures.

And, unless this is a seriously podunk hospital, they likely already run Microsoft Exchange for email, and so have electronic calenders.

Meaning that you're from the only kind of IT department in the world that allows any clueless asshole (students) to connect to your network. Meanwhile this guy works at a hospital where stuff like HIPPA means that if IT policies aren't carried out properly, IT people lose their jobs.

The post is so stupid and bound to generate comments to that effect that I suspect that like many of the "Ask Slashdots" it's entirely fictional. Any hospital admin who is aware of Slashdot would know the reaction he would get here. It's just some twat trolling us. Or possibly the editor spicing up a slow news day.

I could maybe see a doctor doing something in coordination with IT, but what's alarming to me is this guy went ahead and did all this, then connected it to the hospital network, and only THEN decided to contact IT. WTH. If you get *permission*, fine (although I doubt in most hospitals, or businesses generally, you could get permission, because a box on the network that they don't administer could be an unintentional back door into a secure network).